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Heritage Action CEO Michael Needham said Wednesday morning that he would prefer those seeking to defund Obamacare to focus on the budget debate rather than attaching it to the debt ceiling debate.

“No, we should raise the debt limit,” Needham said at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast.

Needham acknowledged that breaching next Thursday’s debt ceiling deadline could have negative consequences. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics-live/liveblog/live-u
pdates-the-shutdown-4/?id=2fe4dc32-2802-4813-a701-1eb0aeda835a]

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House Republican leaders said Thursday they will propose a temporary increase in the nation's borrowing limit -- a first step toward a potential compromise to end the political stalemate that has shut down parts of the government and threatens a U.S. default as soon as next week. http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/10/politics/shutdown-showdown/index.html?hp
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After meeting with his caucus, House Speaker John Boehner said Republicans want substantive talks with President Barack Obama and Democrats on reducing the nation's chronic federal deficits and debt in return for removing the immediate threat of default.

Sources said the House GOP measure would extend the debt ceiling until November 22.

Boehner said the proposal that could be voted on by the House as soon as Friday would offer the temporary increase in the debt ceiling.

In exchange, he wants Obama "to sit down and discuss with us a way forward to reopen the government and to start to deal with America's pressing problems." Same

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House GOP leaders will travel to the White House in the afternoon to meet with the president, and Boehner and other leaders tried to frame the talks as a de facto start of negotiations.

"That's a conversation we're going to have with the president today," Boehner said when asked what it would take for House Republicans to agree to reopen the government. "I don't want to put anything on the table. I don't want to take anything off the table."

Senate Democrats have a separate meeting scheduled with Obama on Thursday, while Senate Republicans have been invited for their own meeting on Friday.

At the private meeting with House Democrats on Wednesday, Obama said he would consider a short-term deal to raise the federal borrowing limit, a Democratic lawmaker told CNN.

"If that's what Boehner needs to climb out of the tree that he's stuck in, then that's something we should look at," according to the lawmaker, who attended the meeting and spoke on the condition of anonymity. http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/10/politics/shutdown-showdown/index.html?hp
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By offering a six-week debt limit lift, Republicans are trying to force Obama to make a deal. But it wouldn't change the status of the government shutdown.

There would be no binding triggers forcing the two sides to come to a long-term agreement. Instead, House Republicans cast the next step as securing a “handshake” agreement with the President to enter negotiations, which Obama has thus far eschewed in an attempt to break what the White House characterizes as “the cycle of hostage-taking.”

“It’s a pretty out-of-the-box kind of an idea from where we’ve been,” concedes Representative Matt Salmon, a conservative Republican from Arizona.

The move is a sign that party leaders are determined to stave off the specter of default, and see an opening to force Obama to the bargaining table. In recent days, conservative activists have also expressed openness to splitting the debt ceiling and shutdown conversations, in the hopes of refocusing the debate on Obamacare. “What this will do, hopefully, is show some movement on our side,” says Wisconsin Representative Reid Ribble. “It gets the President at the table.” It also represents a tacit admission that the House GOP, which has seen its poll numbers slide as the shutdown drags on, recognize the political peril of the negotiation position they had long staked out.

Once there, House Republican want Obama to agree to a familiar package of spending cuts, entitlement reforms and other measures designed to shave down the deficit and reach a balanced budget. The short-term debt limit hike could buy time for Obama and House Republican leaders to revisit the framework of a broader budget deal—perhaps not the grand bargain over which they haggled in 2011, but a package of reforms that both sides could market to their bases as a significant accomplishment.

“We have to attain some kind of agreement before we do a full-year debt ceiling” hike, says John Fleming, a House Republican from Louisiana.

In the meantime, the government would remain shuttered, unless the Republicans’ opening offer paves the way to further agreement. Decoupling the debt limit from the government funding bill gives no relief to the legions of federal workers currently on furlough. But House Democrats have signaled that they would not turn down a clean debt-limit hike of any length, even though they, like the White House, strongly prefer a long-term solution. “We’re not going to vote against making sure that America pays its bills,” said Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer.

It is still uncertain whether the restive House Republican conference broadly supports the plan. While members described the meeting as positive and cordial, others said both more moderate and more conservative members expressed reservation. Some centrist Republicans are concerned about leaving the government shuttered. While several of the Tea Party Republicans who forced the shutdown in an effort to change elements of Obamacare said they would support the plan if Obama signed on, others withheld their support.

“There’s a lot of support for a team effort. It’s not like it’s a sharp division of people opposing each other. People may not agree with the components,” says Representative Steve King, an Iowa Tea Partyer who said he wasn’t sure if he would back the plan. “They’re not unified on a direction, but they’re unified on the idea of getting unified.” More at http://swampland.time.com/2013/10/10/gop-reversal-on-debt-ceiling-not-
a-sure-thing/#ixzz2hLCpfS7f

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